As discussed in parent application Ser. No. 08/123,149 and grandparent Application Ser. No. 07/881,615, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,952, which are both incorporated herein by reference, the steel industry has tried to combine the hot strip mill and the continuous caster through an inline arrangement so as to maximize production capability and minimize the equipment and capital investment required. However, known prior art integrated mills required very high capital costs and were extremely inflexible as to product mix and thus market requirements.
These difficulties gave rise to the development of the so-called thin slab (of about 2 inches or less in thickness when cast) continuous hot strip mill which typically produces 1,000,000 tons of steel per year as specialized products. There are significant quality and quantity limitations associated with the so-called thin slab casters, as discussed in the parent application.
It is an object of our invention to integrate an intermediate thickness slab caster with a hot reversing mill which balances the rate of the caster to the rate of the rolling mill and which uses less thermal and electrical energy. It is still a further object to adopt an automated system with small capital investment, reasonable floor space requirements, reasonably powered rolling equipment and low operating costs. It is a further object of our invention to provide flexibility in the sequencing and processing of cast slabs.